Summary

In an effort to increase participation in community aftercare treatment for substance-abusing offenders who have paroled from prison, the Transitional Case Management (TCM) intervention tested a model of strengths-based case management consisting of (1) completion by the inmate of a strengths and goals assessment as part of discharge planning, (2) a telephone conference call that included the inmate and people central to the inmate's aftercare plan (including the parole officer), and (3) strengths case management for 12 weeks in the community to promote treatment participation and increase the client's access to needed services. (For a more detailed description, see Prendergast Law and Cartier, 2008). With four CJ-DATS Research Centers participating, the study randomized 812 prison treatment clients to the Transitional Case Management condition or to the Standard Referral condition. Detailed assessments occurred at baseline and at three and nine months following release to parole. Data from treatment and criminal justice records, including costs, were also collected. Treatment and criminal justice staff completed surveys on agency collaboration and cooperation.
Respondents were asked questions regarding the barriers to treatment/recovery, education/job training, relationships, finance, living arrangement/housing, health and documentation. They were also asked question related to whether they needed or received certain services.
Other variables included socio-demographic and family background, peer relation and criminal history, health and psychological status, drug and treatment history.

Study Design

Study participants in four states were inmates who had a referral to community substance abuse treatment and were recruited in prison or other confined correctional setting. After informed consent and a baseline interview, they were randomly assigned to one of two conditions: (1) the Transitional Case Management (TCM) condition and (2) the Standard Referral (SR) condition. Detailed assessments occurred at baseline and at three and nine months following release to parole. Data from treatment and criminal justice records, including costs, were also collected. Treatment and criminal justice staff completed surveys on agency collaboration and cooperation.

Sample

Recruitment of 812 participants was completed in March 2007, with 411 randomly assigned to the TCM group and 401 to the SR group (one SR participant inadvertently received TCM services). Twenty-five percent of the participants were women, allowing for analysis of gender differences. Case management services were provided from January 2005 through December 2007. Of the recruited sample, 47 participants (25 TCM; 22 SR) were either not released from prison in time to participate in community services or paroled to a county or state where TCM services were not available. Follow-up interviews were not conducted with these participants, but their criminal justice records were obtained. The follow-up interview rate was 90 percent at 3 months and 89 percent at 9 months. The TCM and the SR groups were comparable at baseline and follow-up on demographic, drug use, and crime variables.

Universe

All the Adult felony offenders ages 18 years or older in the correctional institutions who have an identified substance abuse problem, who are enrolled in an institutional treatment program, who have a referral to a community treatment program following release, and who will be paroling to an urban area.

Data Type(s)

experimental data

Mode of Data Collection

Original Release Date

2014-03-13

Version Date

2014-03-14

Version History

2014-03-13 ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of disclosure. ICPSR also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to these procedures, ICPSR performed the following processing steps for this data collection:

Created variable labels and/or value labels.

Standardized missing values.

Created online analysis version with question text.

Performed recodes and/or calculated derived variables.

Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes.

2014-03-14 A revised manual has replaced the one previously released.

Notes

The public-use data files in this collection are available for access by the general public. Access does not require affiliation with an ICPSR member institution.